Two newly elected MPs from the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party were among six people arrested over an attack on a Pakistani man in Athens, in the latest in a series of incidents that have raised fears that Greece‘s immigrants are being targeted in the runup to this month’s crucial elections.

Ilias Panagiotaros and Ioannis Vouldis were briefly held alongside the daughter of Nikos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn’s leader, but were later released. According to police, the attack took place late on Friday when a group involved in a protest turned on a 31-year-old Pakistani bypasser.

Golden Dawn confirmed two of its MPs had been held, but denied they took part in the attack. “[They] could not have been involved because they were miles away,”it said in a statement.

Golden Dawn caused consternation across Europe after winning 7% of the vote in Greece’s elections in May, giving them 21 seats. It is the first time the far right has sat in parliament since the fall of the military junta in 1974. With their neo-Nazi insignia, violent rhetoric and calls to expel Greece’s immigrants, Golden Dawn’s leaders are hoping to exploit political instability in Greece to gain further ground in elections called for 17 June after no party was able to form a government following last month’s vote.

In the run-up to the first election, Golden Dawn ran TV ads with the campaign slogan, “Let’s rid this country of the stench.” On election night Michaloliakos dedicated their success to “all the brave youngsters who wear black T-shirts with Golden Dawn written in white”. Unemployment in Greece now stands at at 22%, and 52% among young people, and the party has sought to capitalise on a mood of fear across a country that is struggling to come to terms with rising crime, falling living standards and a feeling that it is on the brink of economic and political meltdow.

Greece’s 1 million immigrants have become an easy target for neo-Nazi and other far-right groups, who regularly parade through Athens chanting racist slogans.

On Saturday the youth wing of the leftwing Syriza party condemned the attack, saying: “An orgy of violence and murderous attacks is taking place in the streets of Athens … Those who think they will address the immigration issue with knives, swords and minefields along the borders have no place in our neighbourhoods, even less so in parliament.”

The elections, seen as a referendum on Greece’s membership of the euro, will be a tightly fought contest between the conservative New Democracy party and Syriza.

“Police BlotterScholar” Robert Spencer is always on top of the “Muslim Problem,” to quote Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Robert Spencer is always on top of telling us what is going wrong within the Muslim community, keeping us up to date on all of the criminal activity within the Muslim community, just like a…police blotter!

One of his latest entries on the blotter is the disturbing story about the naturalized American citizen who was arrested for an alleged plot to attack the nation’s second busiest subway system. Spencer introduces his post thus:

At least one accomplice — he may have had more. So many Misunderstanders of Islam! Why is the Muslim community worldwide such an abysmal failure at communicating the peaceful nature of its religion to its own people?

Funny guy that Spencer, eh? What “Scholar” Robert Spencer did not mention, to no surprise, was that the tip that led the FBI to survey this wacko and monitor his every move, eventually leading to his arrest, came from within the Muslim community itself:

The tip that led to the FBI’s subway bombing sting came from a source in the Muslim community…

So, it was the Muslim community which helped lead the FBI to the alleged subway attacker, the so-called (by Spencer) “D.C. jihadist.” Isn’t that interesting? In fact, the same holds true for the five men from Virginia who were arrested in Pakistan for plotting terrorist attacks. It was their own families who alerted authorities:

The story of the five men became public when the council got their families in touch with the FBI after they left the United States shortly after Thanksgiving without telling their parents. That triggered an international missing persons case. The men were arrested Dec. 8 at the home of Chaudhry’s father, Khalid Farooq Chaudhry, and the terror allegations began immediately.

Now, Spencer asked: “Why is the Muslim community worldwide such an abysmal failure at communicating the peaceful nature of its religion to its own people?”

Clearly, the “scholar” has no idea what he is talking about, because, by turning in one of its own who chose the path of religiously motivated criminality, the Muslim community communicated loudly and clearly to the rest of the world that it is indeed a peaceful, loyal community dedicated to the security of its homeland.

Some days ago, a man of Pakistani descent by the name of Faisal Shahzad tried to detonate a bomb in Times Square. Shahzad was arrested, and confessed to the crime, saying that he did it in retaliation for U.S. drone attacks against Pakistan. These U.S. led drone attacks are illegal under international law and constitute an act of war against Pakistan. In fact, they have killed hundreds of Pakistani civilians and have created widespread anti-American sentiment in the country.

I analyzed the Times Square bombing here, and explained how the only way to truly stop the recruitment of terrorists against the U.S. is for us to stop bombing them over there. Unfortunately, the U.S. government decided to take another route…

Shahzad’s plot failed. Nobody was hurt; nobody was killed. But the United States decided to react in an Israeli manner, and sought to avenge the zero dead by dropping more bombs on Pakistani heads, killing civilians in the process. There’s nothing bombs can’t solve, right? Sounds like we’ve taken a page out of the terrorists’ playbook.

Is it not interesting that we know exactly how many militants died–twenty-four (not twenty or twenty-five)–but are somehow dumbstruck when it comes to how many civilians have been killed? Why can’t we report at least a roundabout number of how many civilians were killed?

By leaving out a number, the government and the mainstream media attempt to dehumanize the victims; they are a faceless, even numberless lot…not worthy of more than one line dug deep in the text of the article. Had civilians died in the Times Square bombing, the mainstream media would tell us their names, their life stories, and the families they left behind. Meanwhile, the victims of the U.S. drone attacks not only don’t get faces, they don’t even get numbers. This is truly a Herculean achievement! It used to be that they would be reported as faceless numbers; now they are both faceless and numberless. Effectively, it’s as if they never existed, effaced from the pages of time.

It may interest you to know that–as a matter of policy–the United States does not count how many civilians have been killed by the U.S. military–neither in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iraq. General Tommy Franks declared: “We don’t do body counts.” That’s strange. If you invaded these countries to liberate its people, wouldn’t you want to know how many of them you have killed, so you can evaluate whether or not your “liberation” is really benefiting them?

If we use previous estimates, at least one-third of those killed in these recent drone attacks were civilians, meaning at least eight people. Can you imagine the rage in American eyes if the Times Square bomber had successfully killed eight New Yorkers? We’d have bombed Pakistan “back to the Stone Ages.” But when our drones slaughter Pakistani civilians in these illegal drone attacks, we somehow expect the Pakistanis to thank us for it. And by the way, eight is based on conservativeestimates. According to Pakistani sources, the number of civilians killed by U.S. drones far outnumbers the number of militants.

We must stop this back-and-forth, this tit-for-tat. We can’t retaliate by killing civilians. We simply can’t, not only if we want to stop the recruitment of terrorists, but also if we want to live up to the very ideals that this country was founded upon.

Most importantly, the question is: how many drone attacks on militants and civilians alike will quench our thirst for blood, our desire for revenge?

The arrest of Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old US citizen of Pakistani descent, as the alleged driver of the vehicle used in the failed Times Square bombing represents an opportunity to respond effectively to a potential act of terrorism – instead of reacting with fear and hysteria that will inevitably be manipulated by extremist elements.

As of Tuesday morning, details are slowly emerging regarding the potential motives of suspect Shahzad, who was arrested at JFK airport as he planned to fly to Dubai, having recently returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan. Despite initial evidence and statements from law enforcement agencies suggesting this incident lacked the sophistication and planning of an international operation, the Pakistani Taliban has nonetheless claimed responsibility for this amateurish and failed attempt.

Their eagerness speaks volumes about their desperation to instil fear in the hearts of the American public by an act of terrorism on the US mainland. The instant resumption of New York’s kinetic lifestyle following such an incident clearly demonstrates American resilience and immunity to such intimidation.

Regrettably, however, similar moments of tension – though isolated – have in the past been used cynically by bigoted ideological pundits in both non-Muslim American and Muslim communities to sow dissension and enmity. We saw this tendency recently, when a mentally unstable Army major, Nidal Hassan Malik, opened fire and killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. A Nigerian student, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, forever known as the underwear bomber, tried to ignite himself on an airplane on Christmas Day after, staggeringly, getting past security despite having been previously flagged (an unacceptable internal administrative mistake, revealing a lack of communication between security agencies).

These incidents of violence or attempted terrorism by radicalised individuals in America – as well as the blank space in the New York skyline that was once graced by the World Trade Center towers – serve as unending fuel for the rightwing commentators. And those bellicose pundits will inevitably squeeze every drop of righteous anger and fear from this failed Times Square plot, in order to promote a dangerously inaccurate image of an Islamic monolith comprising 1.5 billion diverse individuals as having an innate homicidal aversion to “our freedoms”. Attacks will, no doubt, be made on Barack Obama’s efforts at conciliation and partnership with Muslim communities – as evidenced by his al-Arabiya interview, his historic speech to Muslims in Cairo, and his outreach to Muslim American organisations and leaders.

Sarah Palin and her ilk will argue passionately on Fox News to “profile away” evil-doers – in effect, advocating racial profiling of ethnic minorities, especially of Middle Easterners and South Asians. Anticipating public anxiety, Obama reacted to calls for “greater security” following the failed Christmas Day bombing by implementing catch-all measures – recently amended – to extend special pat-downs and heightened profiling to individuals returning from 14, mostly Muslim, countries.

Despite overwhelming evidence showing that racial profiling and the erosion of civil liberties and due process are counterproductive in fighting terrorism, I worry that fear and divisive rhetoric will be used to undermine the mutual trust and co-operation that has been painstakingly built over the past two years between American Muslims and law enforcement agencies.

Rightwing demagogues who proclaim the virtues of the west, and argue that terrorism is unique to the “Muslim world”, should be reminded of evidence to the contrary. The recent arrest of nine members of the Christian terrorist militant group, the Hutarees, for conspiring to kill police officers and wage war on the United States government has largely been labelled an anomaly. The suicide flight of disgruntled Joseph Stack into the IRS building in Texas, which killed an innocent public employee, has been overlooked, even as Tea Party-type anger at federal government institutions has been allowed to fester.

Islam, too, has its reckless demagogues. Radicalised Muslim elements manipulate asinine episodes such as satirical cartoon depictions of the Prophet as categorical proof that the “imperialist” west is perpetuating its war on all of Islam and Muslims. Recent violence and threats against those cartoonists who have depicted the Prophet in a disrespectful manner do not emerge from a vacuum, but rather they are symptomatic of a sustained belief in a skewed and simplistic narrative of the “war-mongering west” that finds its evidence in the Iraq war, US support for Israel, civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and cozy US relations with brutal Arab dictatorships. These thugs ultimately bear the greatest blame for betraying the legacy and spirit of their Prophet, who urged moderation and civility.

In the face of the threat from extremists, the greatest mistake Americans could make would be to revisit the rhetoric and security policies of George W Bush, which proved to be disastrous in curbing global terrorism but highly successful in eroding the US’s standing in world opinion, and which damaged co-operation with Muslim communities. Ultimately, the best defence is the very same values of freedom, liberty and democracy they wish to defend and protect.

The sad reality of modern, globalised 21st century existence is that the threat of terrorism and violence is a constant, yet manageable and containable, aspect of daily life. Reactionary posturing, rampant ethnic stereotyping, scapegoating of minorities, and provoking mistrust of Muslim Americans and allies have only ever exacerbated the risks. Recent history has shown that a reasoned and moderate perspective, along with sound security measures, vigilant policing, protection of civil liberties and mutual aid are our best hope.

As more evidence in this case emerges in coming days, let us hope this philosophy prevails.

Wajahat Ali is a Muslim American of Pakistani descent. He is a writer and attorney, whose work, The Domestic Crusaders is the first major play about Muslims living in a post 9/11 America. He is the Associate Editor of Altmuslim.com. His blog is here